Transportation on the Skids

It gets worse. The new state transportation plan includes only $22 million for the next six years for what is called preliminary engineering. That produces the documents necessary to put a project out for bid. The $22 million, in turn, could lead to about $350 million in road construction.

And what does that get Virginia, again, in the next six years? About 60 or 70 miles of road improvements.

How does Gov. Mark R. Warner figure into all this?

Not comfortably.

Warner hit a wall trying to get the Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads transportation referendums passed in 2002. He then proposed a transportation funding plan earlier this year. It was ignored.

So if Warner now figures that a new funding proposal for 2005 -- an election year in Virginia -- would amount to teeing up the ball for the "no-no-no" bunch, that's understandable.

That brings us to that one reliable source of enlightenment -- Virginia's all-utility glutton for political punishment, state Sen. John H. Chichester (R-Stafford). The Fredericksburg Republican and leader of the Senate Finance Committee popped up in Charlottesville recently to say that Virginia soon will be stuck with a maintenance-only road program. It has to have a long-range transportation solution, he said, as in more money.

Chichester would lean more heavily on user fees rather than on general tax dollars. "Transportation is perhaps the best example of a service that should be paid for by those who use it," he said, echoing a tune played by the referendum opponents.

Of course, Chichester is a pragmatist at heart, taking a see-a-problem, find-a-fix approach, which was Virginia's historic method of dealing with transportation issues.

But that is not the prevailing view in the House these days, where the anti-everything theorists hold sway. Until those self-satisfied impediments get removed, the "doo-doo" prognosis for Virginia's roads will remain operative.

gcmorse@cox.net